***I don't think I said we could be vanquished as far as salvation is concerned, but like Calvin, I think we can be vanquished from the battle by being compromised by sin or defeat. That's why the writer of Hebrews says "laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us, let's run the race..."***
Run the race to what? Bind Satan? I think you are way out on a limb trying to defend the idea of binding Satan, now. Even if I have a personal battle to bring my own sin into subjection and run my own personal race, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Satan. That is, unless you seem to believe that somehow Satan sits on my left shoulder and Jesus is sitting on my right.
I'm still looking for this battle against Satan? All I see is the remains of what the Lord did and a horde of Dispyies chasing shadows.
Amen. This from Boettner's "Reformed Doctrine of Predestination" --
..."This is the true universalism of the Scriptures — the universal Christianization of the world and the complete defeat of the forces of spiritual wickedness. 'This, of course, does not mean that every individual will be saved, for many are unquestionably lost. Just as in the salvation of the individual much possible service to Christ is lost and many sins are committed through the period of incomplete salvation, so it is in the salvation of the world. A considerable number are lost; yet the process of salvation is to end in a great triumph, and our eyes are yet to behold "the glorious spectacle of a saved world." The words of Dr. Warfield are very appropriate here: "The human race attains the goal for which it was created, and sin does not snatch it out of God's hands; the primal purpose of God with it is fulfilled; and through Christ, the race of man, though fallen into sin, is recovered to God and fulfills its original destiny." 2
"So while Arminianism offers us a spurious universalism, which is at best a universalism of opportunity, Calvinism offers us the true universalism in the salvation of the race. And only the Calvinist, with his emphasis on the doctrines of sovereign Election and Efficacious Grace, can look to the future confidently expecting to see a redeemed world."